https://github.com/msg-systems/msg-fonts

msg Fonts for Professional Typography
https://github.com/msg-systems/msg-fonts

fonts group msg typography

Last synced: 11 days ago
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msg Fonts for Professional Typography

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/msg-systems/msg-fonts
• Owner: msg-systems
• Created: 2019-11-20T17:12:37.000Z (over 5 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2020-10-02T16:31:19.000Z (over 4 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2025-06-13T11:06:12.670Z (11 days ago)
• Topics: fonts, group, msg, typography
• Language: HTML
• Homepage: https://www.msg.group/
• Size: 25.1 MB
• Stars: 1
• Watchers: 3
• Forks: 0
• Open Issues: 0
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md

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README

        

msg Fonts

=========

Created: 2015-09-05


Modified: 2020-10-02

![msg Fonts](preview-small.png)

Challenge

---------

The msg Research division of the [msg group](https://www.msg.group/)

wants to use professional typography in the following four usage

contexts:

- *Adobe Creative Suite* products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)

- *Micosoft Office* products (PowerPoint, Word)

- *HTML5 Single-Page-Applications* (SPA)

- *Web-Sites*

For this, professional fonts are required which cover the following

four major use cases:

- *Edge*: For caption and discreet text. (all regular use)

- *Text*: For regular body text. (all regular use)

- *Head*: For header and call-out text. (all regular use)

- *Note*: For scripted and annotated text only. (exceptional and very spare use only)

- *Code*: For mono-spaced and source-code text only. (exceptional and very spare use only)

- *Deco*: For stand-alone quotes and decorative text only. (exceptional and very spare use only)

Solution

--------

As most commercial fonts cannot be used unrestricted (especially when

it comes to embedding the font and wide spreading the results), Open

Source licensed fonts are used. The [TypoPRO](http://typopro.org/)

project provides an extensive and hand-collected set of those fonts.

Inspired by TypoPRO, we have chosen 24 individual fonts to cover the

above six major use cases and prepared the fonts for the above four

usage contexts. The font sources are:

- Adobe Source Sans Pro 3.006 (2019-09)


  https://adobe-fonts.github.io/source-sans-pro/


  https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-sans-pro/


  Open Font License 1.1

- Kalam 1.020 (2014)


  http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Kalam



  http://www.google.com/fonts#UsePlace:use/Collection:Kalam


  Open Font License 1.1

- Overlock 1.002 (2006)


  http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/overlock


  http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/download/overlock

  Open Font License 1.1

- Hack 3.003 (2018)


  http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/


  https://github.com/chrissimpkins/Hack/releases

  SIL, Bitstream Vera License, Public Domain

The particular preparation consists of mapping font family names, font

weights and font styles in the following way:

    --------------------------------    -----------------------------

    SOURCE:                             TARGET:

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

    Family          Weight   Style      Family         Weight Style

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

    Source Sans Pro Light    Regular    msg Edge       Normal Regular

    Source Sans Pro Light    Italic     msg Edge       Normal Italic

    Source Sans Pro Normal   Regular    msg Edge       Bold   Regular

    Source Sans Pro Normal   Italic     msg Edge       Bold   Italic

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

    Source Sans Pro Normal   Regular    msg Text       Normal Regular

    Source Sans Pro Normal   Italic     msg Text       Normal Italic

    Source Sans Pro SemiBold Regular    msg Text       Bold   Regular

    Source Sans Pro SemiBold Italic     msg Text       Bold   Italic

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

    Source Sans Pro Semibold Regular    msg Head       Normal Regular

    Source Sans Pro Semibold Italic     msg Head       Normal Italic

    Source Sans Pro Bold     Regular    msg Head       Bold   Regular

    Source Sans Pro Bold     Italic     msg Head       Bold   Italic

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

    Kalam           Light    Regular    msg Note       Normal Regular

    Kalam           Light    Regular    msg Note       Normal Italic

    Kalam           Normal   Regular    msg Note       Bold   Regular

    Kalam           Normal   Regular    msg Note       Bold   Italic

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

    Hack            Normal   Regular    msg Code       Normal Regular

    Hack            Normal   Italic     msg Code       Normal Italic

    Hack            Bold     Regular    msg Code       Bold   Regular

    Hack            Bold     Italic     msg Code       Bold   Italic

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

    Overlock        Normal   Regular    msg Deco       Normal Regular

    Overlock        Normal   Regular    msg Deco       Normal Italic

    Overlock        Bold     Italic     msg Deco       Bold   Regular

    Overlock        Bold     Italic     msg Deco       Bold   Italic

    --------------- -------- -------    -------------- ------ -------

Notice the following cruxes here:

- The "msg Text Bold" intentionally uses just the semi-bold variant

  of the underlying Source Sand Pro font family, as the regular

  bold variant optically is too heavy.

- The "msg Edge Bold" intentionally equals "msg Text Normal" and "msg

  Text Bold" intentionally equals "msg Head Normal" as it is not the

  intention to provide a total of six weights with msg Edge/Text/Head.

  Instead, each one of msg Edge/Text/Head is intended for a particular,

  separate use-case and should be of the best weight in its Normal

  weight and still provide a "somewhat" bolder weight in its Bold

  weight. As a result, msg Edge/Text/Head technically consists of

  6 weights, but optically consists of just 4 weights. The second

  reason for this special mapping is that the original (and now unused)

  ExtraLight weight of Source Sans Pro is nearly unreadable on beamer

  presentations and the original (and now also unused) Black weight of

  Source Sans Pro is nearly unreadable at small sizes.

- The "msg Note" font family actually uses the font family Kalam twice:

  once for the regular style and once again for the italic style. The

  reason is that there is no suitable script font which includes both

  regular and italic style as the regular style of a script font usually

  is already "italic" or oblique.

- The "msg Note", "msg Code" and "msg Deco" fonts were manually resized

  (through manipulation of the TTF head/unitsPerEm setting) to fix the

  x-height of msg Edge/Text/Head.

- The "msg Code" font was manually compressed (through manipulation of

  the TTF hmtx/mtx/weight settings) to optically better fit "msg Text".

- The above mapping results in exactly four fonts per font family to ensure

  the resulting fonts can be easily used even in the Microsoft Office

  products where under Windows one can only choose the font family

  and then just optionally enable bold weight and/or italic style.

Results

-------

- Stage 1:


  Here we downloaded the individual source font files.

    - `msg-Fonts-1-SRC/*`:


      The downloaded font files.

    - `msg-Fonts-1-SRC-Downloads.txt`:


      The download URLs.

- Stage 2:

  Here we converted and patched the fonts according to the above preparation.

    - `msg-Fonts-2-GEN/*`:


      The patch files for changing the font files in batch.

    - `msg-Fonts-2-GEN-Conversion.sh`:


      The batch script for the conversion/preparation procedure.

- Stage 3:

  Here we provide the resulting fonts for Desktop Publishing (DTP) with

  the two usage contexts *Adobe Creative Suite* products (Photoshop,

  Illustrator, InDesign) and *Micosoft Office* products (PowerPoint,

  Word).

    - `msg-Fonts-3-DTP/*`:


      The individual resulting font files.

    - `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Windows-System-Install.bat`,


      `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Windows-System-Uninstall.bat`,


      `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Windows-User-Install.bat`,


      `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Windows-User-Uninstall.bat`,


      `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Windows-Util.ps1`:


      The batch scripts to install/uninstall the DTP fonts under

      Windows, either locally for the current user or globally for the

      system (required administrator privileges).

    - `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-macOS-System-Install.bat`,


      `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-macOS-System-Uninstall.bat`,


      `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-macOS-User-Install.bat`,


      `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-macOS-User-Uninstall.bat`:


      The batch scripts to install/uninstall the DTP fonts under

      macOS, either locally for the current user or globally for the

      system (required administrator privileges).

    - `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Specimen-1-refer.pptx`:


      The font specimen in PowerPoint format, referencing installed fonts.

    - `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Specimen-2-embed.pptx`:


      The font specimen in PowerPoint format, embedding the fonts.

    - `msg-Fonts-3-DTP-Specimen-3-export.pdf`:


      The font specimen in exported PDF format.

- Stage 4:

  Here we provide the resulting fonts for the Web and the

  two usage contexts *HTML5 Single-Page-Applications* (SPA) and *Web-Sites*.

    - `msg-Fonts-4-WEB`:


      The individual resulting font files.

    - `msg-Fonts-4-WEB-Specimen-1-refer.html`:


      The font specimen in HTML format, referencing local fonts.

    - `msg-Fonts-4-WEB-Specimen-2-embed.html`:


      The font specimen in HTML format, embedding the fonts.

    - `msg-Fonts-4-WEB-Specimen-3-export.pdf`:


      The font specimen in exported PDF format.

Author

------

Dr. Ralf S. Engelschall


Director msg Research


[email protected]